The trend in the bandling of mail, clothings, yarnwound bobbins, etc. in recent years has been placing increasing demand to hang such articles on trolleys which run on a ceiling rail, so that such articles are conveyed while being hung on the trolleys to places where they are stored and handled. In such a transferring device, it is common practice to employ a so-called power line by which the trolleys are engaged with a hook on a chain running along the running rail, so that the trolleys are transferred to the individual storage places and handling places. At the individual storage places and handling places the trolleys have to be halted temporarily on the rail. There is also sometimes employed a so-called free line by which the trolleys are moved on an inclined rail owing to the gravitational force and on which the trolleys are engaged with a stopper and halted at any desired moment on the rail. The aforesaid free line is connected to said power line by means of a branch device.
With reference to the aforesaid free line, however, where the inclination of the inclined rail is small, the trolleys are often stopped and retarded on the inclined rail due to the dust and dirt adhered on the rail, particularly due to the fly waste when the yarn-wound bobbins are being handled. On the other hand, if the inclined rail is too steep, the trolleys tend to be kept run due to the moment of inertia until it collides with another trolley, giving damage to the articles and inviting unexpected accident. That is to say, it is very difficult to find the appropriate inclination of the rail.
Further, when the distance between the article handling places is long, the difference in height increases between one end and the other end of the inclined rail, making handling operation of articles by the workers difficult. For example, in operating the spinning frame, when it is intended to draw a sliver from the sliver bobbin supported by the trolley and to feed and set it to the spinning frame, the height of the bobbin at one end of the long spinning frame becomes taller than the height of a man, making it hard to draw the sliver from the bobbin.
Moreover, when the trolleys are to be taken out from a storage place where a number of trolleys are stored, the aforesaid conventional free lines often fail to start the trolleys even when the stopper is unlocked.